Treating Stablecoin Issuers as Banks

A recent departmental proposal would require stablecoin issuers to register and operate under anti‑money‑laundering and know‑your‑customer rules like banks, imposing bank‑level monitoring and compliance costs on new coins. That change would raise launch and operating costs, push issuers toward banking partnerships or offshore jurisdictions, and alter how crypto is used for payments and reserves. — If adopted, the policy could materially reshape the crypto ecosystem, payments innovation, and enforcement tradeoffs between financial integrity and technological competitiveness.